Every Heart Needs A Home

We are so excited to update everyone on our recent fundraising events and to introduce you to the official Buckley Adoption Shirt!  

Our first fundraiser and ongoing is the Apparent Project.  Which are the beautiful hand-made Haitian Bracelets, which support international children stay with their families and prevent child-abandonment, and the other portion of the proceeds goes towards our domestic adoption.  So far we have sold 300 bracelets!!! This means we have raised $1,800 towards our adoption and sent $1,200 to the Apparent Project in Haiti.  Thank you to those who purchased these bracelets and helped sell them!

We had our first fundraising garage sale and bake sale last weekend which was a huge success!  We were wonderfully overwhelmed with all of the donations from friends and family.  Thank you to those who helped us organize and run the garage sale, those who dropped off items and also those who came by and bought them.  We would also like to thank the women of KCPD who baked super yummy goodies for us to sell during the fundraiser.

Official Buckley Adoption Shirt

We are hoping to spread the word with this shirt about our adoption and of course the biggest message, "Every Heart Needs A Home!" For every t-shirt purchased it helps us get closer to bringing our little one home.  $10 from every adult and youth sized t-shirt goes directly to our adoption fund!  We designed this shirt with several things in mind.  We wanted a t-shirt that would be a billboard for God's love, adoption and missions all in one.  We believe that the 3 go together hand-in-hand.  The phrase "Every HEART needs a HOME" speaks very loudly to us.  From an adoption perspective, we will love our future children no matter where they come from and feel that every child deserves a loving home.  We put our home state of Missouri as the background because that will be where our child will be coming home!  In the bottom right corner it is personalized with "Buckley Adoption".  We hope that our shirts will open doors for people to share the love of adoption and providing homes for those who need one.  Thank you so much for your support; we can't wait to bring Baby Buckley Home!

 You can purchase these shirts at https://www.bonfirefunds.com/the-buckley-adoption-fund .

Haitian Bracelets and Garage Sales

  First and foremost, thank you. The amount of love and support that has came in for us has been uplifting, it is awesome to know that so many people are there to help us through it all. Most of you know that my wife and I have had to walk a hard road for the past year. Never in either of our lives have we had to go through so much hardship and loss. Then when it came time to really sit down and talk about our future and children, it was scary. Do we try again and hope for a miracle? Can we even handle another late term loss? Why.....? 

  As everything progressed and Mary Jane and I learned about the odds and challenges of us having children we started to realize that unconventional means might be our way to start a family. So then we asked ourselves, could we adopt? Then I remembered back to when my wife and I had first started dating. To that first time when people ask silly questions to each other to just try and feel each other out, 1,000 pointless questions about food, colors, animals, hobbies, the future, ect... Once we got to the point of talking about our own personal futures, we got on the subject of kids. How many each of us wanted, and what our goals as parents would be. Then after all that, she asked me: "If you couldn't have children for whatever reason, would you adopt?" I said yes. Only now my wife was looking at me and she wasn't joking. Would I adopt? 

  I knew that years later my answer hadn't changed. I would, without a doubt, adopt. So here we are. Walking down a new road, a better road. One with a light at the end of the tunnel and a chance of having a family of three. But it isn't without its struggles. As most of you are probably aware adoption can be vastly expensive. Mary Jane and I are working as much as we can to save towards our adoption. I wanted to make this post to let everyone know more about why we were adopting and some little fundraisers we are doing to help us be a family. The first fundraiser is awesome, it is called The Apparent Project. The Apparent Project is a humanitarian artisan's guild in Haiti that seeks to prevent child-abandonment and relinquishment by creating jobs for parents at risk. What they do is send you the bracelets that you see in both of the photos. Each bracelet has the photo of the worker that made them and a little bit about them and why they are part of the project. The bracelets are sent to us free of charge, but for each one we sell we have to give a percentage back to the project. The bracelets are $10. 

  Once all the bracelets are sold, we send money back to Haiti to help international children stay with their families and prevent child-abandonment, and the other portion of the proceeds goes towards our domestic adoption. So the money gets split between our adoption and international at-risk children, which is great. If you want to learn more about the project you can check them out at www.apparentproject.org, but regardless if you have time you should check out their promotional video: http://vimeo.com/70765636. Our other fundraiser is a garage sale that we will have some time in June during a neighborhood garage sale day. If you happen to have something in your house that you don't want, or that has been sitting in your attic for far too long, this is as good a chance as any to get rid of it. All the proceeds we can make from the garage sale will be going into our adoption fund. Nothing to buy here, just give us your reasonably sellable junk! Once we have a set date and time we will make another post about the garage sale, that way we can work something out to get any items that are being donated to us. Again, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to show love and support for our cause.

Join Us As We Walk Down The Road To Adoption

      Michael and I are excited to announce that we are adopting!  Our story, which some of you may or may not know, that has led us to this life changing decision was the losses of our daughter Aria Sophia Buckley and most recently our son Leonardo Beckham Buckley.  Both of our children suffered from Bilateral Renal Agenesis (no kidneys) or as most know it, Potter's Syndrome.
      Going through this together has really shown us how strong our marriage really is and how much love and support we not only have for each other, but from our family and friends as well.  So after struggling with our pursuit to have a healthy child, we are pursuing domestic infant adoption to build our forever family and fulfill our dream of being parents.
      This blog will be our way to share our journey through adoption with friends and family.  We will be having a few fun & exciting fundraisers to help us cover the financial costs that come with adopting. We hope that everyone can partake in our journey with us to becoming a family of 3!